By John Duncan Talbird. Vsevolod Pudovkin entered Moscow University to study physical chemistry at the age of seventeen. His studies were disrupted by the start of World War I where he was soon taken prisoner. Reportedly, he saw D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance (1916) in his late twenties and his passion for […]
Hybridity Challenging “Un-Filmable”: The Story of Temple Drake (Criterion Collection)
Tony Williams
April 18, 2020
By Tony Williams. This adaptation of William Faulkner’s notorious novel Sanctuary (1931) first appeared as a Paramount production in 1933, a year before the imposition of the notorious Hays Code, which it supposedly jump-started. Its celebrity resembled the later infamy associating Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris (1972) and Pasolini’s Salo […]
All Senses Considered – Contemporary Film Directors: Lucrecia Martel by Gerd Gemünden
Thomas Puhr
March 11, 2020
A Book Review by Thomas Puhr. I received Gerd Gemünden’s Contemporary Film Directors: Lucrecia Martel without having seen a single film by the titular artist. To say I’ve been missing out is an understatement. The movies themselves are evidence enough of Martel’s singular vision and its significance to global cinema, […]
An Immersive Observational Doc: Paris is Burning (Criterion Collection)
March 9, 2020
By Gary M. Kramer. Jennie Livingston’s vibrant, groundbreaking 1990 documentary, Paris Is Burning, about the Harlem drag-ball scene, has been digitally remastered and released by Criterion on DVD and Blu-ray. The film, which was part of the New Queer Cinema movement, remains a stunning achievement thirty years after its initial […]
Home Sweet Ho-Hum: José Ramón Larraz’s Deadly Manor (Arrow Video)
Rod Lott
February 26, 2020
By Rod Lott. One month after releasing 1998’s Edge of the Axe on Blu-ray, Arrow Video returns to the José Ramón Larraz well with Deadly Manor, another of the late Spanish director’s three career-twilight reciprocations to the slasher trend. The 1990 film stakes another claim on his CV, being his […]
Sound and Vision: Kantemir Balagov’s Beanpole
Thomas Puhr
February 20, 2020
By Thomas Puhr. You hear before you see anything: a muffled gurgling noise accompanies the black screen over which the opening credits play. This disorienting audio elicits several questions (Who, or what, is making these noises? Are they sounds of pleasure, discomfort, pain?), all before a single image appears. With […]
“The Man with the Million Dollar Smile”: The Douglas MacLean Collection
Jeremy Carr
February 17, 2020
By Jeremy Carr. Douglas MacLean is hardly a household name, even among those who consider themselves ardent enthusiasts of silent cinema. It’s little wonder, then, that prior to One a Minute (1921) and Bell Boy 13 (1923), the two films included in the Undercrank Productions DVD release of The Douglas […]
Chile, a Rough Beast Emerging: Patricio Guzman’s The Cordillera of Dreams
Michael Sandlin
February 12, 2020
By Michael Sandlin. In this, the third and final entry of Chilean exile filmmaker Patricio Guzman’s documentary trilogy poetically examining his native country, he uses the famous Cordillera mountains as his geographical and philosophical centerpiece. From the initial lavish overhead shots of this majestic mountain range we eventually get to […]
The “Kids” are Back: Rene Eller’s WE
February 11, 2020
By Gary M. Kramer. We (aka Wij), now available on DVD and Blu-ray from Artsploitation Films, is being billed as a shocking story of reckless, amoral youth. The film features pornography and explicit sexuality (involving teens), death, (teenage) prostitution, blackmail, more sex, more death, violence, rape, and more bad behavior. […]
What Do You See? Alien in the Mirror: Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Glazer and Under the Skin by Maureen Foster
Thomas Puhr
February 4, 2020
A Book Review by Thomas Puhr. Recently appearing on both Cahiers du Cinéma’s top 10 of 2010-2019 and Variety’s list of the decade’s most overrated films, Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin (2013) remains deeply divisive. Though Maureen Foster acknowledges and embraces its polarizing effect in her superb Alien in the […]